CAIRO, May 26 (Reuters) - A spokesman for Hamas' armed wing said on Sunday its fighters had captured Israeli soldiers during fighting in Jabalia in northern Gaza on Saturday, though the Israeli military denied the claim.The Hamas armed wing spokesman did not say how many soldiers had been abducted and showed no proof of the claim."Our fighters lured a Zionist force into an ambush inside a tunnel ... The fighters withdrew after they left all members of the force dead, wounded, and captured," Abu Ubaida, the spokesman for Al Qassam Brigades, said in a recorded message broadcast by Al Jazeera early on Sunday.The Israeli military on Sunday denied the claim by Hamas' armed wing."The IDF (Israeli Defence Forces) clarifies that there is no incident in which a soldier was abducted," the military said in a statement.
This sort of story is published often. Hamas makes a claim, the IDF denies it, and the reader is left to wonder which side is telling the truth.
But from the beginning of the war, whenever Hamas and the IDF claimed different things, has Hamas ever been found to be telling the truth and the IDF lying?
Just about every day the Qassam Brigades publishes lurid stories that they killed several IDF soldiers. On the Israeli side, when a soldier if killed, the IDF admits it. When they deny it, Hamas cannot point to any evidence it was telling the truth.
In this case, the IDF announced a single soldier was critically wounded on Saturday in northern Gaza. Not an entire squad captured, wounded and killed.
Hamas' track record of telling the truth in these kinds of situations is abysmal.
So why do Reuters, and the New York Times, and all the other news media keep publishing Hamas' claims and Israeli denials as if they are equally valid?
Shouldn't the readers and viewers be told that Hamas has a very long track record of lying? Isn't that something that should be mentioned habitually as critical context for these sorts of stories? Or do Reuters and the others really believe that Israel might be covering up soldier deaths and kidnappings, the way Hamas claims?
It is another case where journalists pretend to be objective but in fact is giving lies the exact same weight as the truth, which is not journalism at all.
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